A Guide For Harvard S Sophomore Economics Concentrators

Writing Economics
A Guide for Harvard’s Sophomore
Economics Concentrators
Robert Neugeboren with Mireille Jacobson
© 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard University (minor revisions in Jan. 2005)

Acknowledgments
This guide was proposed and supported by The Harvard Writing Project. Nancy
Sommers, Sosland Director of Expository Writing, and Kerry Walk, Assistant
Director of the Writing Project, read drafts, gave advice, and saw the project
through from inception to completion. Kerry Walk wrote the section on
Formatting and Documentation (chapter 5). Christopher Foote, Assistant
Professor of Economics and Director of Undergraduate Studies, wrote part of
chapter 3 and commented on drafts of the whole work. Oliver Hart, Michael
Murray, Lorenzo Isla, Tuan Min Li, Allison Morantz, and Stephen Weinberg also
gave very helpful comments. Special thanks to Mireille Jacobson, who
compiled the appendices, added examples, and revised and proofread the text.
Thanks also to Anita Mortimer and the Economics Tutorial Office.

Contents
1 Introduction | The Economic Approach
1 Economics and the Problem of Scarcity
2 The Assumption of Rationality
2 The Theory of Incentives
3 Writing Assignments in Economics 970
3 Plan of This Guide
5 One | Writing Economically
5 Getting Started
5 The Keys to Good Economics Writing
6 An Example from the Literature
7 Achieving Clarity
9 Managing Your Time
10 Two | The Language of Economic Analysis
10 Economic Models
11 Hypothesis Testing
12 Regression: An Example
12 Improving the Fit
12 Applying the Tools
14 Three | Finding and Researching Your Topic
14 Finding a Topic for a Term Paper
15 Finding and Using Sources
16 Doing a Periodical Search
17 Taking and Organizing Notes
18 Four | The Term Paper
18 Outlining Your Paper
19 Writing Your Literature Review
20 Presenting Your Hypothesis
21 Presenting Your Results / by Chris Foote
25 Discussing Your Results

27 Five | Formatting and Documentation / by Kerry Walk
27 Placing Citations in Your Paper
28 Listing Your References
30 Sample References Entries
35 Appendix A | Fields in Economics
39 Appendix B | Standard Statistical Sources
42 Appendix C | Electronic Indices to Periodical Literature
44 References

1 | Writing Economics
Introduction | The Economic Approach
Economists study everything from money and prices to child rearing and the
environment. They analyze small-scale decision-making and large-scale
international policy-making. They compile data about the past and make
predictions about the future. Many economic ideas have currency in everyday
life, cropping up in newspapers, magazines, and policy debates. The amount
you pay every month to finance a car or new home purchase will depend on
interest rates. Business people make investment plans based on expectations
of future demand, and policy makers devise budgets to achieve a desired
macroeconomic equilibrium.
Across the broad range of topics that interest economists is a unique
approach to knowledge, something common to the way all economists see
the world. Economists share certain assumptions about how the economy
works, and they use standard methods for analyzing data and communicating
their ideas. The purpose of this guide is to help you to think and write like an
economist.
ECONOMICS AND THE PROBLEM OF SCARCITY
Since its beginnings as “the dismal science,” economics has been preoccupied
with the problem of scarcity. The hours in a day, the money in one’s pocket, the
food the ground can supply are all limited; spending resources on one activity
necessarily comes at the expense of some other, foregone opportunity.
Scarcity provides economics with its central problem: how to make choices in
the context of constraint.
Accordingly, economists ask questions such as: How does a consumer
choose a bundle of commodities, given her income and prices? How does a
country choose to meet its objectives, given its national budget? How do
decision-makers allocate scarce resources among alternative activities with
different uses?
While this central economic problem may be rather narrow, the range of
topics that interest economists is vast. Indeed, insofar as it can be
characterized as choice under constraint, any kind of behavior falls within the
scope of economic analysis. As Lord Lionel Robbins (1984), one of the great
economists of the twentieth century, put it:

We do not say that the production of potatoes is economic activity and the
production of philosophy is not. We say rather that, in so far as either kind
of activity involves the relinquishment of other desired alternatives, it has
its economic aspect. There are no limitations on the subject matter of
Economic Science save this.
It should come as no surprise that economists are sometimes called
“imperialists” by other social scientists for their encroachment on fields that
traditionally belong to other disciplines. For instance, historians studying the
migration patterns of eighteenth-century European peasants have explained
the movement out of the countryside and into the cities in terms of broad
social and cultural factors: the peasants were subjects of changing times,
swept along by the force of history. By contrast, economists, such as Samuel L.
Popkin (1979), have attributed urban migration patterns to the trade-offs
faced and choices made by individual actors; from this perspective, the
behavior of these peasants was rational.
THE ASSUMPTION OF RATIONALITY
Economists approach a wide range of topics with the assumption that the
behavior under investigation is best understood as if it were rational (though
we know that not all behavior is, in fact, rational) and that the best
explanations, models and theories we construct take rationality as the norm.
Rationality, in the words of Frank Hahn, is the “weak causal proposition” that
sets all economic analyses in motion. “Economics can be distinguished from
other social sciences by the belief that most (all?) behavior can be explained
by assuming that agents have stable, well-defined preferences and make
rational choices consistent with those preferences” (Colin Camerer and
Richard Thaler, 1995).
Rationality, in the standard sense of the economist, means that agents
prefer more of what they want to less. This may seem like a rather strong
proposition, insofar as it seems to imply that human behavior is necessarily
calculated and self-interested. But the assumption of rationality does not
imply anything about the content of agents’ wants, or preferences; hence to
be rational is not necessarily to be selfish. One can want others to be better
off and rationally pursue this objective as well. Economists assume that
whatever their preferences, agents will attempt to maximize their satisfaction
subject to the constraints they face. And good economics writing will take the
assumption of rational behavior as its starting point.
THE THEORY OF INCENTIVES
The theory of incentives posits that individual agents, firms, or people, make
decisions by comparing costs and benefits. When costs or benefits – the
constraints on choices – change, behavior may also change. In other words,
agents respond to incentives.
Many recent developments in economics and public policy are based on
the theory of incentives. For example, recent welfare reforms recognize that
traditional welfare, which guarantees a basic level of income but is taken

away once that level is surpassed, provides incentives for those below the
earnings threshold to stay out of the formal workforce. This and other
criticisms have led to the adoption and expansion of programs such as the
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC seeks to rectify this particular
incentive problem by making transfers only to working individuals. Such policy
changes suggest that incentives matter for behavior. Thus, a thorough
analysis of any behavior, and a well-written account of it, must accountfor
incentive effects.
WRITING ASSIGNMENTS IN ECONOMICS 970
In Sophomore Tutorial (Economics 970), you will receive several writing
assignments including a term paper, an empirical exercise, short essays,
response papers, and possibly a rewrite. Below is a description of these types:
• Term Paper (10–15pp.). In all tutorials, you will be required to write a term
paper that addresses a topic in depth and combines skills developed
throughout the semester. It usually builds on earlier short assignments,
including a prospectus, in which you will propose a thesis or question and
detail how the issue will be addressed. This term paper may require
research beyond what has been assigned to the group. It typically includes
a literature review, an empirical component, a discussion of results, and
perhaps a discussion of policy implications.
• Empirical Exercise (5–6pp.). All tutorials also assign some kind of empirical
exercise in which you will analyze economic data using a standard
statistical software package (such as STATA). The empirical exercise will
give you experience in answering an economic question with data and/or
drawing conclusions from evidence.
• Short Essays (4–6pp.). Short essays may require you to analyze two articles
and compare their policy implications, explain a model, criticize an
argument, present a case study, extend a theory, evaluate an intellectual
debate and so on.
• Response Papers (1–2pp.). Response papers might involve summarizing
the weekly readings or answering a specific question about the text. These
will help get you thinking and stimulate class discussion. They can also
build the skills needed for writing successful longer papers.
Make sure you clear up any confusion about the assignment by asking
your tutor specific questions about what he or she is looking for. The earlier
you get clarification, the better able you will be to complete the assignment
(and get a good grade). For longer papers, you may want to hand in rough
drafts. Getting feedback may improve your writing considerably and generally
makes for more interesting papers.
PLAN OF THIS GUIDE
Understanding the way economists see the world is a necessary step on the
way to good economics writing. Chapter 1 describes the keys you need to
succeed as a writer of economics and offers an overview of the writing process

from beginning to end. Chapter 2 describes the basic methods economists use
to analyze data and communicate their ideas. Chapter 3 offers suggestions for
finding and focusing your topic, including standard economic sources and
techniques for doing economic research. Chapter 4 tells you how to write a
term paper. Finally, Chapter 5 provides a guide to citing sources and creating a
bibliography. Three appendices provide useful information for developing your
term papers. Appendix A provides a roadmap of fields in economics and can
help define very broad areas of interest. Appendix B lists some standard
statistical sources that you may wish to use for your own research and
appendix C lists the relevant electronic indices to periodical literature,
invaluable resources for the initial stages of any paper.

One | Writing Economically
Pick up any publication of the American Economics Association and you will
discover a few things about writing economics. First, the discourse is often
mathematical, with lots of formulas, lemmas, and proofs. Second, writing
styles vary widely. Some authors are very dry and technical; a few are rather
eloquent.
You don’t have to be a great “writer” to produce good economics writing.
This is because economics writing is different from many other types of
writing. It is essentially technical writing, where the goal is not to turn a clever
phrase, hold the reader in suspense, or create multi-layered nuance, but rather
to achieve clarity. Elegant prose is nice, but clarity is the only style that is
relevant for our purposes. A clear presentation will allow the strength of your
underlying analysis and the quality of your research to shine through.
If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter and done reasonablywell on the
assignment, you may be tempted to rely on your ability to churn out pages of
prose late at night. This is not a sensible strategy. Good economics papers just
don’t “happen” without time spent on preparation; you cannot hide a lack of
research, planning and revising behind carefully constructed prose. More time
will produce better results, though returns to effort will be diminishing at
some point. Here, too, the principles of economy apply.
GETTING STARTED
Getting started is often the hardest part of writing. The blank page or screen
can bring on writer’s block, and sustaining an argument through many pages
can seem daunting, particularly when you know your work will be graded.
Don’t let these concerns paralyze you; break the paper down into smaller
parts, and get started on the simpler tasks. Economics writing usually requires
a review of the relevant literature (more on this later). Especially if you’re
stuck, this can be a great way to begin.
THE KEYS TO GOOD ECONOMICS WRITING
Writing in economics, as in any academic discipline, is never simply a matter
of asserting your opinions. While your ideas are important, your job includes
establishing your credentials as a writer of economics, by demonstrating your
knowledge of economic facts and theories, identifying and interpreting the

underlying economic models, understanding what others have said about the
relevant issues, evaluating the available evidence and presenting a persuasive
argument. Even if you don’t write particularly well, you can produce good
economics papers by attending to three basic tasks:
Research
Economic research often entails pouring over reams of data from any of a
number of standard statistical sources (see appendix B). For some assign-
ments, you will want to begin your paper with a review of the literature on the
topic. For a term paper, this might entail an exhaustive library search (see
appendix C); for other assignments, you may need to reference only a single
paper your instructor has assigned. In general, your writing will reflect the
quality of your research, and good writing will demonstrate that you
understand the findings that are relevant to your topic.
Organization
Once you have found your sources, you will need to organize your ideas and
outline your paper. Economists usually organize their writing by using
simplified models (such as supply and demand, cost/benefit analysis and
comparative advantage). Therefore, a literature review is often followed by the
presentation of a model, usually one of the standard models or, for the
theoretically inclined, one of your own devising. Models are used to organize
data and generate hypotheses about how some aspect of the economy works.
Analysis
Reducing something complex into simpler parts is an integral part of
economic rigor. Statistical analysis (or econometrics) takes vast piles of data
and returns useful numerical summaries that can be used to test various
economic models and make predictions about the future. Mathematics is very
helpful here because it is a precise language that can articulate the way basic
economic relations are conceptualized, measured and defined. Nonetheless,
even before you have mastered sophisticated statistical and mathematical
techniques, your goals should be writing clearly, following a line of deductive
reasoning to its conclusion and applying the rules of inference correctly. These
are the marks of good economics writing.
AN EXAMPLE FROM THE LITERATURE
Generally, in the first few paragraphs of a paper, economists set up their
research question as well as the model and data they use to think about it.
This style can be useful to both writer and reader as it establishes the
structure of the work that follows. Unfortunately, it sometimes means a
stilted or dry presentation. An excerpt from a piece by two of the field’s most
eloquent authors, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz (1996), illustrates a
skillful approach to setting up a research question, placing it in the literature
and outlining how the work to follow extends existing research. Notice, in
particular, that these steps need not be completely independent.

The piece, taken from the authors’ work on the historical relationship
between technology, human capital, and the wage structure, starts by
presenting the facts motivating the question:
Recent technological advances and a widening of the wage structure have
led many to conclude that technology and human capital are relative
complements. The possibility that such a relationship exists today has
prompted a widely held conjecture that technology and skill have always
been relative complements.
Next they explain the existing theories behind this relationship:
According to this view, technological advance always serves to widen the
wage structure, and only large injections of education slow its relentless
course. A related literature demonstrates that capital and skill are relative
complements today and in the recent past (Zvi Griliches, 1969). Thus
capital deepening appears also to have increased the relative demand for
the educated, serving further to stretch the wage structure.
Then they clearly and simply state their question:
Physical capital and technology are now regarded as the relative
complements of human capital, but have they been so for the past two
centuries?
Next they cite more of the related literature:
Some answers have already been provided. A literature has emerged on
the bias to technological change across history that challenges the view
that physical capital and human capital have always been relative
complements.
Finally they propose how they seek to answer this question:
We argue that capital-skill complementarity was manifested in the
aggregate economy as particular technologies spread, specifically batch
and continuous process methods of production.
Their paper goes on to establish the empirical evidence that backs up this
assertion. As evidenced by the example above, the clarity of your prose, the
quality of your research, the organization of your argument, and the rigor of
your analysis are the keys to your success as an economics writer.
ACHIEVING CLARITY
Clear writing is easy to read but hard to write. It rarely occurs without
considerable effort and a willingness to revise and rework. As McCloskey
(1985), the dean of economics writing, tells us: “it is good to be brief in the
whole essay and in the single word, during the midnight fever of composition

and during the morning chill of revision” (McCloskey, 1985). The rules of clear
writing apply to the organization of the entire paper, to the order of
paragraphs, to sentences and to words. Few writers achieve clarity without
continual editing. Once you have your basic ideas down, be sure to reread and
revise your work.
Clarity can be achieved in stages:
• Organize your ideas into an argument with the help of an outline.
• Define the important terms you will use.
• State your hypothesis and proceed deductively to reach your conclusions.
• Avoid excess verbiage.
• Edit yourself, remove what is not needed, and keep revising until you get
down to a simple, efficient way of communicating.
This last stage is crucial. Take, for example, the following excerpt from a
student’s short response paper:
In the beginning of the 1980’s, the problem of homelessness in the United
States became apparent (Richard B. Freeman and Brian Hall, 1989). Since
then, the number of homeless in this country has continued to grow.
While the problem of homelessness, in itself, is obviously a problem that is
quite relevant to other fields of economic study, it has also given rise to a
phenomenon that is an interesting topic for the study of behavioral
economics: the donation of money to help the homeless population.
With a little revision, the author could have achieved a more clear and concise
introduction:
Early in the 1980’s, increasing homelessness in the United States became
apparent (Freeman and Hall, 1989). Since then, the number of homeless
has continued to grow. While homelessness is studied in many fields of
economics, it has given rise to a particular phenomenon– the donation of
money directly to the homeless – that interests behavioral economists in
particular.
Below are some additional tips to achieving clarity and some examples
that apply them. These and many other useful tips can be found in Strunk and
White (1979).
Use the Active Voice
It turns a weak statement (first one) into a more direct assertion (second
statement):
In this paper, the effect of centralized wage-setting institutions on the
industry distribution of employment is studied.
This paper studies the effect of centralized wage-setting institutions on
the industry distribution of employment.

Put statements in Positive Form
Many day-traders did not pay attention to the warnings of experts.
This statement is more concisely conveyed as follows:
Many day-traders ignored the warnings of experts.
Omit Needless Words
In spite of the fact that the stock market is down, many experts feel that
financial markets may perform reasonably well this quarter.
A better way to express the same thing is:
Although the stock market is down, financial markets may still perform
reasonably well this quarter.
In Summaries, Generally Stick to One Tense
This study showed that dividend payouts increase when dividend income
was less tax-disadvantaged relative to capital gains.
An improvement uses the present tense throughout:
This study shows that dividend payouts increase when dividend income is
less tax-disadvantaged relative to capital gains.
MANAGING YOUR TIME
The best laid plans for writing a good paper can be wrecked by poor time
management. Make sure you clear up any confusion about the assignment
right away. Set deadlines for completing each phase of the project:
• Start the project by finding your topic.
• Begin your research.
• Start an outline.
• Write a draft.
• Revise and polish.
Divide your time, from the moment you receive your assignment to the
moment it is due, into segments allotted to each task. Hold yourself to the
deadlines you set, and allow yourself time to revise and polish the paper. The
payoff will be a better product, a better grade and less anxiety throughout.

Two | The Language of Economic Analysis
The economy is a complex web of interdependent elements, and
understanding any part is a significant accomplishment. The price of tea in
the US is determined by many factors, including individual preferences (or
tastes), labor costs, weather conditions and the price of tea in China, among
others. Preferences, labor costs, weather, etc. are in turn connected to other
factors, including the price of coffee, which in turn can affect the price of tea.
All the parts can be moving simultaneously, making it hard to see what is
causing what.
To write effectively about economics, you have to understand how
economists think about such complicated phenomena. In general, to make
their task easier, economists focus on and try to isolate simple causal
connections, often between two variables ceteris paribus, or “other things
being equal.” “Other things being equal,” what is the effect of a change in
labor costs on the price of tea? “Other things being equal,” how does a change
in the price of coffee affect the price of tea?
This kind of analysis allows economists to say something very precise
about well-defined relationships and to run rigorous tests to measure the
strength and direction of their connections. Of course, focusing on just one
relationship at a time means other relationships are artificially held constant,
so that our analyses necessarily diverge from reality. They are hypothetical.
But simplification and abstraction are necessary ingredients of any theoretical
enterprise, and a good economist knows the real world is more complex.
ECONOMIC MODELS
Economic analysis is characterized by the use of models, simplified
representations of how economic phenomena work. Supply and demand,
cost/benefit analysis and comparative advantage are examples of basic
economic models. A model is a theory rendered in precise, usually
mathematical, terms. Economists build models the way curious scientists do:
Reduce the phenomenon to its basic elements and recombine these elements
so as to produce a model that resembles the original in relevant respects. Take
it apart, figure out how it works, then put it back together and see if it goes.
Economic models specify relationships between two kinds of variables:
exogenous variables and endogenous variables (Gregory N. Mankiw, 1997).
Exogenous variables are inputs to the model, factors that influence what

happens but are themselves determined “outside” the model. They are givens,
fixed values that are assumed not to change over the period of analysis.
Endogenous variables are outputs of the model, determined “within.” Usually,
a mathematical function is used to represent the relationship between
exogenous and endogenous variables. Systems of relationships, in which
changes in one part of the economy have different consequences in others,
are often conveniently represented by systems of functions. For example, we
can model the market for compact discs (CDs) in terms of three functions:
The quantity of CDs demanded depends (negatively) on the price of CDs
and (positively) on income (Y): Qd = D(PCD , Y).
The quantity of CDs supplied depends (positively) on the price of plastic
(because CDs are made from plastic) and on the price of CDs:
Qs = S(PCD , PP).
In equilibrium, the quantity of CDs supplied equals the quantity
demanded: Qd = Qs .
In this model, the price of plastic and the level of income are exogenous
variables; the price of CDs and the quantity of CDs exchanged are endogenous
variables. By plugging data (exogenous variables) into the model, it is possible
to predict the behavior of the endogenous variables, thus generating
hypotheses about phenomena that have not yet been observed.
Applying basic models allows one to make predictions about the real
world economy, both forward-looking predictions about, say, future interest
rates and backward-looking predictions about, say, the savings rate during the
depression. Models also provide guidance about where to look for and how to
look at data, and they provide a structure on which the rest of the paper can
hang.
HYPOTHESIS TESTING
A model’s predictions about the future or the past are essentially empirical
hypotheses: claims, supported by facts, about how some economic phenome-
non works. Most economists, aspiring to be good social scientists, would like
to test their hypotheses under laboratory conditions. But this is not ordinarily
possible. Instead, we take sample data from the real world, by looking at
census reports, balance sheets and the like, and we use statistical methods to
test the predictive power of our models and the hypotheses they generate.
Most economic data come in, or can be easily transformed into, numerical
terms. Prices and quantities are numbers, and economists also attach
numerical measurements to factors such as standards of living that do not
usually come in quantified form. But a long list of numbers is just that until a
relationship among them can be specified that imparts some order. By
building and using models, economists are able to focus on simple, sometimes
subtle, relationships in the data and explain the causal links at work. Finding
the pattern in the data allows one to say something about how the economy
works. A set of well-known models can greatly simplify the task of organizing

and communicating your ideas. But the real test of a model is how well it
helps us understand the workings of the economy.
REGRESSION: AN EXAMPLE
Say, for instance, you are interested in explaining the causes of inflation. You
study the literature and learn about a connection between the level of eco-
nomic activity and the level of inflation. You formulate a simple hypothesis:
Hypothesis: High levels of employment lead to high levels of inflation.
Observations: Monthly employment (X) and inflation rates (Y) in the US
from 1980–1995. (Two lists of 12x16 = 192 observations)
Regression: Y =a + bX + c. b measures the correlation between X and Y. Ifb
is positive and statistically significant, the hypothesis cannot be rejected.
(a is a constant; c is an error term.)
In order to run such a regression you will need a fairly large number of
observations. Without enough data you may not be able to decide between
this and the alternative, or null, hypothesis (i.e., high levels of employment
have no relationship to high levels of inflation) by statistical measures alone.
In such cases, there may be better ways to do an empirical exercise (e.g. case
study; experimental methods).
Even with enough data, statistical analyses show correlation, not
causation. A model is needed to explain howthings work – for instance, how
high levels of employment lead to high levels of inflation.
IMPROVING THE FIT
The fit between a model and reality is never perfect. When the fit is good, we
can make better predictions about the future and better understand the past.
In the former case, the passage of time will fail to disconfirm the prediction; in
the latter case, historical research will match our expectations. As in any
science, our theories can really only be disproved. However, when our
predictions are correct, the weight we place on our models increases. When
our predictions are wrong, we are left either looking for more data or perhaps
a new or revised model. That model may be used to generate new predictions,
which can then be confronted with new data, which may again bring
disconfirmation of the prediction and suggest a revision of the current model.
APPLYING THE TOOLS
Most of the writing done in economics involves the application of old models
to new data, with the goal of better understanding some real world economic
phenomenon. This may or may not involve analyzing a large dataset. This
example, taken from an Ec 970 term paper, applies economic tools– namely,
game theoretic analysis – to one particular issue, the role of international
institutions in the post Cold War era:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the continuing role of NATO and the
likelihood of lasting cooperation among the organization’s member states
in a post-Cold War world. Game theory and the study of strategic
interactions, although initially devised as a tool for understanding Cold
War motives and actions, nevertheless are extremely applicable to a post-
Cold War environment. I therefore plan to incorporate several relevant
international relations issues into a game theoretical perspective – first to
discuss the cooperation that actually occurred in NATO since the 1940s,
and then to explain why similar cooperation may be unlikely among
security-based regimes after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another kind of writing, the theory paper, involves criticizing the models
we use and proposing better ones. The goal of the theory paper is to improve
the conceptual underpinnings of the particular analytical tools we use to
understand the actual economy. This may be a better model of how firms
behave in uncertain market conditions, or a new way to measure the level of
national economic activity, or a synthesis of existing theories to produce a
new, more general theory.
Because all economic models are crude approximations of a complex
world, it is necessary to assess just how crude the approximations are before
we can say which model better fits the data. Interpreting statistics and
determining what can and cannot be reliably inferred given the observations
available requires knowledge of economic theory as well as a healthy dose of
mathematics. Mathematical logic is also used to build new models, both to
formalize the logical structure of the model and to test for its coherence and
internal consistency. The mathematics of model building does not involve
numbers, but it does specify quantities (quantifiers) and uses well-defined
operators to combine (sets of) propositions.
Economic theory was not always so mathematical. And the mathemati-
zation of economic theory has had costs as well as benefits. The benefits are
that, in many cases, more can be said quickly and precisely, because
mathematics is a powerful language and convenient shorthand. The cost is
that not all relevant phenomena are easily cast in mathematical terms or can
be only crudely captured mathematically. Another cost is that economic
theory becomes somewhat less accessible to students and to the world at
large, in which public policy debates are conducted.

Three | Finding and Researching Your Topic
Economists view the world through the lens of efficiency, starting from the
assumption that individuals behave rationally and focusing on the problem of
allocating scarce resources. From this common analytical perspective,
economists study a wide range of topics, involving the behavior of individuals,
organizations and nations. The economic approach can be applied so broadly
that choosing a topic to write on can be difficult. Indeed, once you start
looking at the world through the eyes of an economist, almost anything can
be analyzed in terms of choice under constraint.
Your own research has to meet the terms of the assignment as well as the
time and other constraints you face. You may need to read books and journal
articles in the library or pore over data sets on a computer. In either case, you
will need a topic before you can begin. If your instructor gives you a list of
topics, a review of related research may help you choose among them. If the
research question is entirely up to you, a literature search is often not the best
way to begin. Immersing yourself in the literature before you have found a
topic may convince you that all the interesting questions have already been
tackled. At the very least, literature searches should be guided by very general
topic ideas.
FINDING A TOPIC FOR A TERM PAPER
Though there is no one way to find a topic, thinking of the issues that interest
you is a great place to begin. While the range of possible topics is large, there
are some well-defined fields in economics, and your own interests are likely to
fit into one of these (see Appendix A for an annotated list of fields). Course
materials, textbooks, handouts, and so on are obvious and convenient places
to look, especially since your topic will most likely have to pertain to the
course subject. But reading the newspaper and keeping an eye on current
events can be even more helpful. Once you have a general idea, you should go
to the literature and see how economists have tried thinking about it.
For example, say your interest is piqued by recent shootings in both
schools and workplaces. What role has the availability of guns played in these
events? What are the effects of banning guns? Implementing tougher gun
control laws? Though this might initially strike you as a government or law
project, many of the underlying issues are fundamentally economic – gun
control measures explicitly place limits on supply and attempt to put guns in

disfavor or reduce demand. Once you have identified guns and gun control as
an area of interest, do your literature search (more on this later). Pick out the
relevant articles and scour them for content as well as for additional sources.
Try to narrow down your topic. Have the authors pointed out any future
research areas? Are there any issues that you think have not been fully
addressed?
In addition to finding something that interests you, you will also need a
project that can be done within the parameters of the assignment (for
example, length, due date, access to research materials). If the topic doesn’t
interest you, you probably won’t put in the effort needed to do a good job or
ask the right questions along the way. On the other hand, a profoundly
interesting topic may not be manageable given the time and other constraints
that you face.
As another example say you are interested in the stock market and want
to know what determines stock prices. From basic economic theory, you know
that prices are determined by supply and demand, but what specific
relationships do you need to study and what data do you need to gather? You
think about it for a while and realize there are many parts to your question.
What determines the price of a particular company’s stock is a different
question from what determines the level of stock prices in general (as
measured by Dow Jones or another index), though the two may be related.
And what determined stock prices yesterday might be different from what
explains changes in stock prices in the future. Each of these questions could
be the subject of an interesting paper. Your original topic was overly broad;
you should focus on a single, manageable question.
Get started on your research even if you don’t have a precise topic; it will
evolve along the way. The question you begin with may become less
interesting, and something new may draw your attention. You may be
persuaded by an argument you encounter or find data that pose a problem
you hadn’t considered. You may find no data on one topic and a goldmine on
another. Shaping your topic in this way is perfectly fine, but don’t get trapped
in an endless maze of new, or just slightly revised, topics. You want your
search to converge on a manageable topic in a reasonable amount of time.
Find a question you can answer and begin your work.
FINDING AND USING SOURCES
All academic writing involves the use of source materials. Archaeologists look
in the ground for artifacts, about which volumes of research may
subsequently appear. Biologists look through microscopes and write up the
laboratory experiments they perform. Historians study documents;
sociologists interview subjects . . .
Economic research typically begins with a (large) set of numerical data –
say, a list of per capita incomes for every country in the UN or the history of
daily closing prices for shares of XYZ Corporation over the last year. In these
long lists of numbers, economists look for patterns, or regularities, that reveal
some underlying relationship between economic variables and help explain
how some part of the economy works. A data set could include hundreds or
thousands of entries; thus, statistical tools are used to summarize this

information and ease your job of communicating with your audience. The
mean of a large set of numbers conveys important information in a compact
form. Knowing the standard deviation and other statistical measures can also
be helpful when describing the population under investigation and presenting
the results of your research.
Economic sources come in two types. The first is empirical data: facts
about the real world that come in, or can be easily converted into, numerical
form (for example, prices, quantities, income levels). The second is academic
literature: books or articles that you read in the library that can help you or-
ganize your ideas and make sense of the heaps of data you have accumulated.
In general you will not have the time or resources to go into the field and
compile your own data – administer questionnaires, study individual balance
sheets, budgets, etc. Instead, you will rely on others to collect your data,
including other economists as well as demographers, auditors and “official”
statisticians. These data are compiled in a number of standard secondary
sources, such as the Economic Report of the President and the Statistical
Abstract of the United States. These volumes and others (see Appendix B)
contain detailed information on public and private spending, wage and tax
rates, and work force size and education levels, as well as other information
grouped by states, industries and nations. Economists frequently begin their
research with these sources; they will either point you to the proper primary
source or contain the precise data you need for your paper.
You will also want to look at academic journals and other scholarly
literature on your topic. Using scholarly sources will allow you to invoke the
authority of experts in the field to sanction your analysis or to establish the
point of departure for your own original contribution. You need to become
familiar with what others have thought and written so that you can
communicate your findings in terms your audience will recognize. Perhaps
you will apply a standard model found in the literature to new evidence or
compare two models and see which does a better job explaining the data you
have found.
These works will also point you to additional sources. Bibliographies,
citations and footnotes may reveal a single, seminal forerunner. Read it. If you
come across a “review” or “survey” article, you have hit the jackpot. It will
contain an authoritatively complete summary of the literature in the field.
DOING A PERIODICAL SEARCH
Periodical literature was once indexed in cumbersome hardbound volumes.
Nowadays, there are a number of very useful electronic indices available on-
line and updated frequently. Most are publicly available on the internet,
although some reside on the college’s proprietary system. Appendix C
describes those sources that are used most frequently by economists.
Depending on the service you’re using, your search can be very deep,
including title, author and subject as well as abstracts, tables of contents and
related topic fields. This makes electronic searching far more powerful than
anything that could be done just a few years ago. Once you find a relevant
article, look at the abstract. Check a few more items and retrieve from the
shelves whatever looks interesting and useful.

TAKING AND ORGANIZING NOTES
The books, articles charts and tables strewn before you are the objects of your
research, the evidence you will marshal to support your argument. Your first
encounter with your sources should be carefully recorded: you should
document your findings and give proper credit to the sources you use.
First, take down the complete bibliographic record:
Author(s) (or Editor(s).
Title.
Journal. Volume. Number.
Date. Pages.
For the Goldin and Katz (1996) example used in chapter 1, your notes would
look as follows:
Goldin, Claudia and Katz, Lawrence F.
“Technology, Skill and the Wage Structure: Insights from the Past.”
American Economic Review, 86 (2).
May 1996. pp. 252–257
Keep a file of notes on each article you read. This should include the main
points of the article and any important results. Make sure to clearly set off
direct quotations by using quotation marks. Avoid paraphrasing, because it
will be difficult to separate the original wording from your own later on. You
can add your own comments afterwards, but it is important to keep an
accurate record of your first encounter with the source.
Taking good notes will accomplish several things. First, you will have all
your references at hand when you are writing the paper, so you won’t have to
go searching for a quote or chart when you’re in your dorm room and the
article you need is in the library. Second, you will leave a clear record for your
readers to follow, so that they can go to the originals for more information or
to see the facts for themselves. Finally, you will leave signposts for yourself so
that you can know where you have been and separate your own ideas and
results from those you found in your sources. This will help you avoid
plagiarizing, which can happen inadvertently as your own ideas blur into what
you have “learned” from others. The unacknowledged use of another writer’s
words or ideas is plagiarism, whether intended or not. Poor note taking and
sloppy documentation mechanics can lead to plagiarism, but such mistakes
are easy to correct and avoid.
Start taking notes right away. A word processor can make things easier,
but even if you use pen and paper, try to develop good note-taking habits
from the outset. Create a note file for each source you find. Group your notes
by topic, alphabetically, chronologically or otherwise. As you organize them,
add comments and summaries, pick out important themes and focus on
issues for further research. These notes should help motivate your project by
shaping the analytical model used and, through your summaries, form the
beginnings of a good literature review.

Four | The Term Paper
You have chosen your topic, done your research, and settled on your ideas, and
now you have to write the paper. If you have done your job properly up to now,
you should have a topic, some data and plenty of notes on things you have
read. Now your task is to decide how to focus your question and ideas,
assemble the pieces into a structure that hangs together and present an
argument others will find persuasive.
Remember: writing is a process. Start with a few lines, perhaps just section
headings, and then build up detail and flesh out your analysis. The key to the
process is not to become too rigid too soon. While you want enough structure
to get started, you also want to allow the overall shape of your paper to evolve
somewhat along the way.
OUTLINING YOUR PAPER
The outline for your term paper is the agenda you set for the thingsyou want
to accomplish. A good term paper will ask an interesting question and offer a
plausible answer. It should be plausible in that it is (probably) true, but also
not obviously or patently true; and it should be supportable in that it is
subject to factual observation or logical demonstration (Gordon Harvey,
Harvard Writing Program).
No matter what your field or topic, there is a fairly standard set of things
you want to accomplish in the paper:
• Introduction: Pose an interesting question or problem
• Literature Review: Survey the literature on your topic
• Methods/Data: Formulate your hypothesis and describe your data
• Results: Present your results with the help of graphs and charts
• Discussion: Critique your method and/or discuss any policy implications
• Conclusions: Summarize what you have done; pose questions for further
research
Not every assignment will require all of these parts, but your term paper will
impress your reader if you have done a good job on most of them. You might
want to write the introduction and conclusions after you have completed the
body of the paper. Few points are given for subtlety or surprise. You should

prepare your audience for what you are going to do, then do it, then
summarize what you have done.
WRITING YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW
Depending on your assignment, preparing a literature review might entail an
exhaustive library search or referencing the single paper your instructor has
assigned. You should have notes, either on index cards or in files on your
computer, on the books and articles you have read. Read over your summaries
and comments and begin to look for common themes that can organize your
review. What is the main point of the article, and how does it relate to your
topic? Do other authors offer a similar position? An opposing one?
As you think through these questions, keep in mind that the literature
review has two functions. The first is simply to demonstrate your familiarity
with scholarly work on your topic – to provide a survey of what you have read,
trace the development of important themes and draw out any tensions in
prior research. The second function is to lay the foundations for your paper, to
provide motivation. The particular issues you intend to raise, the terms you
will employ and the approach you will take should be defined with reference
to previous scholarly works. By drawing on such sources, you can find sanction
for your own approach and invoke the authority of those who have written on
the topic before you.
In some instances, these two functions will pull in opposite directions: the
first toward including as many sources as possible, the second toward
selecting only those that are useful for your argument. In any case, more
research is better than less, and a summary is always selective, insofar as only
some things can be included and others left out. The selections you make will
necessarily reflect your own interests and, hopefully, lead the reader to take
an interest in the argument you will present.
For example, Martin Feldstein begins his article “Social Security, Induced
Retirement and Aggregate Capital Accumulation” (1974) with a discussion of
the development of economists’ thinking on lifetime savings patterns. He
starts with a famous early work in the field:
Ever since Harrod’s (1948) discussion of “hump savings,” economists have
recognized the importance of saving during working years for
consumption during retirement (p. 906).
“Hump-savings” refers to the shape of an individual’s savings curve over time:
low at the beginning, higher in the middle, lower at the end. This basic model
is used throughout the paper and holds together all that follows. Feldstein
cites a number of authors who have observed this regularity in empirical data
on personal savings patterns as confirmation of the model. He goes on to
argue that while the “hump-savings” model works well to explain most of the
observed data, the effect of certain government policies on individual savings
has never been measured empirically. In particular, he poses the question:
What is the effect of social security on individuals’ lifetime savings? He then
cites the work of three other authors as well as his own earlier work as
examples of this neglect.

In this way, Feldstein presents his current research as a necessary
development out of well established research program, the next question to
ask on a line stemming from important ancestors to contemporary scholarly
research. The reader is thus prepared for the empirical analysis that follows,
which shows that “social security depresses personal savings by 30–50
percent” (Martin Feldstein, 1974).
PRESENTING YOUR HYPOTHESIS
The literature review sets out the issues that motivate your paper and
demonstrates your familiarity with what others have written on the topic. The
next step is to formulate a specific questions, problem, or conjecture, and to
describe the approach you will take to answer, solve, or test it. Often, this will
take the form of an empirical hypothesis: “social security depresses personal
savings;” “high levels of employment are related to high levels of inflation,”
etc. An empirical hypothesis makes a claim about how some part of the
economy works, and can be assessed by analyzing the relevant data.
In presenting your hypothesis, you need to discuss the data set you are
using and, in most cases, the type of regression you will run. You should say
where you found the data, and use a table, graph, or simple statistics to
summarize them. You should explain how the data relate to your hypothesis
and note any problems they pose. If you have only a small set of observations,
or have to use proxies for data you cannot directly observe, you should
explicitly acknowledge this.
For example, in “Employment-based Health Insurance and Job Mobility: Is
There Evidence of Job-lock?,” Brigitte Madrian (1994) writes:
To study the phenomenon of job-lock, one would like information on
individual and family health status, worker mobility, and the health
insurance plans of both the firm for which and individual works and to
which one could move. Unfortunately, information on health status and
health insurance is not widely available in labor force surveys, information
on worker mobility is not typically available in health surveys, and
information on insurance plans of companies for which an individual could
have worked is nonexistent.
Madrian goes on to offer an alternative method to study job-lock by
looking at two groups of workers who are similar in all respects but one: one
group has employer provided health insurance and the other does not. She
then measures the number of times the workers change jobs and observes a
significant negative relationship between employment-based health
insurance and job turnover.
Madrian is careful not to jump to a hasty conclusion, noting that this
correlation is not itself conclusive evidence of job-lock. Employers that provide
health insurance often provide other benefits that will affect mobility. In
addition, unobserved characteristics of workers’ health status may
independently affect job sorting and mobility because workers with
preexisting conditions may have a harder time getting new health insurance.
Still, Madrian’s careful analysis controls for as many factors as possible and

allows her to conclude: “that there is substantial health insurance-related job-
lock.”
In a term paper, it may not be possible to reach conclusive empirical
results. You may have incomplete data, or your regression coefficients may not
be significant, or you may not have controlled for significantly all the factors
involved. It is better to acknowledge these shortcomings than to make overly
broad and unsupported statements.
PRESENTING YOUR RESULTS / by Chris Foote
One of the more common mistakes made by authors of economic papers is to
forget that their results need to be written up as carefully and clearly as any
other part of the paper. There are essentially two decisions to make. First, how
many empirical results should be presented? Second, how should these results
be described in the text?
How Many Results Should I Report?
Less is usually more. A common mistake made by virtually all novice
researchers (including graduate students) is to include every parameter
estimate from every regression specification that was run. Such a “kitchen
sink” approach is usually taken to show the world that the researcher has
been careful and done a lot of work and that the main results of the paper are
not sensitive to the choice of sample period, minor changes in the list of
regressors, etc. However, pages of parameter estimates usually muddy the
message of the paper. The reader will get either lost or bored. A good general
rule is to present only those parameter estimates that speak directly to your
topic.
For example, suppose you are writing about the effect of education on
wages. Your main regression places an individual’s wage on the left-hand side
and regressors such as education, race, gender, seniority at the individual’s
job, labor market experience, and state of residence on the right hand side.
You believe that the regressor of interest (education) is correlated with the
error term of the wage equation– more “able” people earn more at their jobs,
i.e. have a high residual in the wage equation, and also obtain more education.
Because of this correlation between the error term and education, the
measured effect of education in the regression will reflect not only the true
causal effect of education on wages but also some of the effect of ability on
wages. To circumvent this “ability bias” you use a separate measure as a proxy
for ability. Though such a proxy is probably not available, assume for the sake
of exposition that a special dataset contains an individual’s evaluation by his
or her second grade teacher. When presenting your results you want to focus
only on the estimates of the education effect and the ability effect. Your table
might look something like this:

TABLE I OLS Estimates of the Effect of Education on Wages
Dependent variable: Log of Yearly Earnings 1985–1995
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Years of Education .091 .031 .086 .027
(.001) (.003) (.002) (.005)
Ability Dummy .251 .301
(.010) (.010)
State Dummies No No Yes Yes
Included?
No. of Obs. 35,001 35,001 19,505 19,505
No. of Persons 5,505 5,505 4,590 4,590
Adj. R2
.50 .55 .76 .79
TABLE I.
Notes to Table I. Standard errors are in parentheses. Data are from the
Tennessee Second Grade Ability Survey and Wage Follow-up, and include
individuals evaluated between 1962 and 1971. The “ability dummy” equals
one if the individual’s second grade teacher classified the individual as
“able,” zero otherwise. Each regression also includes yearly dummies, 10
one-digit industry and 20 Census defined occupation dummies, labor
market experience (defined as age – 6), experience squared, seniority on
the current job, seniority squared, Census region of current residence,
marital status, race, gender, and a dummy variable denoting whether the
individual lives in a city of more than 100,000 persons. Columns (3) and (4)
have fewer observations because state of residence is not available for
some individuals.
Note that Table I does not present the parameter estimates of your control
variables, regressors such as marital status and seniority, but presents any
detail that helps interpret the parameters of interest (including the
identification of the dependent variable, which is annoyingly left off of many
tables). For example, explain how you define labor market experience as well
as why the third and fourth regressions have fewer observations than the first
and second regressions. The notes to your table should be extensive enough
so that the reader does not have to look back at the text to understand what
is being presented. The cardinal sin, to be avoided at all costs, is to report your
estimates in terms of “a” or “b” (the actual Greek letters from your equations)
without stating what these coefficients mean. Using eight-letter
abbreviations from your Stata or SAS program (YEDUCT1 or ABIL25A) is not
much better.
Don’t worry about repeating yourself in the text and the notes – this will
often be necessary so the reader can understand your table without looking
back at the text. You should present enough information in total so that a
researcher could replicate your results. For very detailed projects, this may
require a data appendix. Finally, the notes to the table should indicate

whether you are reporting standard errors or t-statistics in the parentheses
underneath the coefficients. Both are seen in the literature, so you must be
clear which you are using. As a general rule, it is better to report standard
errors. That way, your readers can more easily choose the statistical method
they would like to use in evaluating your numbers.
After presenting these results you may want to discuss any additional
robustness checks that you performed. The third and fourth columns of Table I
are robustness checks of sorts; they show that the effect of including ability in
the regression is the same whether or not we include state level dummy
variables. We may also have checked whether the estimate of the education
effect is lower when ability is included, if we subset only on male household
heads or if we restrict the sample to the 1990s. Sometimes all that is
necessary is to let the reader know in the text that you performed these tests
and that the main results were unaffected. For a single robustness check, this
information can even appear in a footnote keyed to the relevant portion of the
text. If there are many robustness checks however, you may want to present
these results in another, more parsimonious table.
How Should I Describe My Empirical Results in the Text?
After you decide how to make your tables, graphs, and figures, you should
clearly and precisely describe them in the text. Establish the main point of the
table in the topic sentence of a paragraph. Forexample, you can describe the
above table like this:
Table I shows that including a measure of ability in the wage equation
dramatically lowers the predicted effect of education on earnings. Column
1 does not include an ability measure and indicates that a year of
education raises wages by 9.1 percent. Column 2 adds the ability measure
and the education effect drops to 3.1 percent. Columns 3 and 4 show that
this general pattern is repeated even when state level dummy variables
are included. The estimates in Table I are therefore consistent with the
hypothesis that the OLS estimates suffer from an upward ability bias.
Note that the first and last sentences in this paragraph are “big picture”
statements, describing how the results in this table fit into the overall theme
of the paper.
Too often, authors do not pay close attention to the paragraphs that
describe their results. The results are already in the table. What difference
does it make how they are described in the text? The reason to craft these
descriptive paragraphs carefully is that any well-designed empirical project is
complex; a lot of factors must be considered in order for any single factor to
be precisely estimated. You want to guide the reader and focus his or her
attention on the important parts of the table, and in the right order. Moreover,
no empirical paper turns out perfectly. Usually the data do not resoundingly
support each and every idea. In these cases, it is crucial to discuss your results
as honestly and carefully as possible.
For example, assume that you are studying the effect of the population
share of lawyers in a city on the subsequent growth rate of that city. Your
theory says that cities with lots of lawyers will grow more slowly than other

cities, but the same is not true ofcities with lots of other highly education
professionals, such as doctors. You get data on the population percentage of
both doctors and lawyers in 25 cities in 1950 and on the growth rates of these
cities as well as the Census region for each city (Mountain, Pacific, Mid-
Atlantic, etc.) from 1950 to 1990. Your regression places the 1950-1990
growth rate of the city on the left hand side; the regressor of interest is the
“lawyer share” of population. The results are presented in the table below:
TABLE II Estimates of the Effect of Lawyers on City Growth
Dependent variable: City’s Population Growth Rate, 1950-1990
(1) (2) (3)
Share of Lawyers -.09 -.08 -.07
in Population, 1950 (.01) (.03) (.05)
Share of Doctors .05 .05
In Population, 1950 (.03) (.05)
Region Dummies No No Yes
Included?
No. of Obs. 25 25 25
Adj. R2
.10 .12 .50
TABLE II
Notes to Table II. Standard errors are in parentheses. The shares of doctors
and lawyers are taken from the Five Percent Public Use Micro Sample of
the 1950 U.S. Census and are defined as the share of each profession
among employed persons in the population aged 25–64. A “city” is defined
as Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area; constant SMSA definitions are
used from 1950 to 1990. Region dummies correspond to the 10 “major
regions” as defined by the Census Bureau.
A bad way to write up this table is:
The first column of Table II shows the main effect predicted by theory. The
second column shows that doctors do not have the same effect on city
growth. Finally, the inclusionof regional dummy variables does not signifi-
cantly affect the main point estimates, though statistical precision is lost.
A better way to write up the table is like this:
Table II shows that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population appears to
lead to slower growth. Yet, when all the determinants of city growth (such
as Census Region growth) are accounted for, the estimate of this effect
becomes less precise. The first column shows that a 10 percentage-point
increase in the lawyer share of population decreases the future city
growth by about .9 percentage points. Column 2 shows that, by contrast, a
high doctor share does not lead to lower growth. In fact, the point esti-
mate for the doctor share is positive, though not statistically significant.

Note however that the estimates in Column 2 are less precise than those
in Table 1, as the standard error for the lawyer effect rises from .01 to .03.
Since the doctor and lawyer share are strongly (positively) correlated,
multicollinearity reduces the precision of the regression. Statistical
precision becomes even more of a concern in Column 3, when we add
dummy variables for Census region. The size of the lawyer effect remains
about the same (-.07 compared with -.09 and -.08), but adding so many
new regressors causes the standard errors to rise to the point that the
lawyer effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero. The implication is
that lawyers do have a negative effect on city growth but that although
the point estimate is robust to the inclusion of other relevant variables it is
not precisely estimated because of the small sample size.
The Bottom Line
When writing up your empirical results focus only on what is important and
be as clear as possible. You may feel that you are repeating yourself and that
the reader may be offended at how closely you are leading him or her through
your tables and graphs but, to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith, both smart
and dumb readers will appreciate your pointing things out directly and clearly.
The dumb readers need the help, and the smart ones will take silent pleasure
in the knowledge that they didn’t need your assistance!
DISCUSSING YOUR RESULTS
Many of the topics that interest economists have real world policy implica-
tions. Your own research may present strong findings about the effects of
existing or proposed policies. While this is fine, you should not conclude that
“this should be done” or “this should not be done.” You should avoid making
value judgments and rely instead on economic facts and analyses. Even when
you have reached your own conclusions about which policy is desirable, your
reader should be able to consider the facts and make the policy decision for
himself or herself.
For example, you may find that substituting policy X for current policy Y
would raise GDP by 2 percent. That is an appropriate conclusion in a term
paper. Be careful, however, not to simply assert that policy X should be
substituted for policy Y. For one thing, it can be very difficult to measure the
welfare consequences of a given set of policies. Dollars and cents may be easy
to measure, but individuals’ well being is not. In addition, your own research
may not have accounted for certain distributional issues, legal issues, matters
of national sovereignty or any number of other things that ultimately affect
the desirability of a given policy.
In the discussion of your result, you should also point out the limitations
of your research, say the relatively small number of observations you have or
the simplicity of the functional form you have tested. In an undergraduate
term paper such limitations are expected. In general, it is better to show your
instructor that you understand the limits of your method than make broad
claims you do not support. You can also suggest questionsor alternative
approaches for further research.

Once you have completed the discussion of your results, you can add a
short conclusion summarizing what you have done. Then go back and write
an introduction that provides a roadmap for the reader. If you have budgeted
your time, you should have a chance to revise the paper, with the goal of
achieving greater clarity. Finally, ask a friend to proofread your work. Make
necessary corrections and then submit.

Five | Formatting and Documentation
Citing the sources you use when you write a paper in economics is a matter of
honesty, credibility, and courtesy. When you indicate to your reader that a fact
or theory derives from a source, you are being honest by giving credit where it
is due, i.e., not falsely claiming to have originated the fact or theory yourself.
You are gaining credibility by showing your readers that you’ve done your
research. And you are behaving courteously by letting your readers know
where they can find the same information, in case they want to do further
reading on the topic.
There is no standard style of acknowledging sources in economics papers,
but a good model to emulate is the style used in one of the field’s most
influential journals: The American Economic Review. We will call this the AER
documentation style. Use this style when you write an economics paper in
which you have cited one or more sources.
In the AER style, writers briefly indicate sources in the text of the paper
and provide fuller bibliographical information in a REFERENCES section at the
end of the paper. Footnotes are reserved for such substantive matters as
suggestions for further reading, an elaboration of a point, an interesting but
not germane rebuttal of a source’s opinion, and so on.
PLACING CITATIONS IN YOUR PAPER
When deriving a theory or fact from a source, cite the source in the text of
your paper. Your in-text citation will contain the name of the author(s) and the
year of publication. The way this information is formatted depends on
(1) whether you wish to draw attention to the source and (2) whether you
have referred to the author(s) previously in your paper.
Loud Reference
If you wish to acknowledge the source of an idea explicitly, cite the name of
the author(s) in the body of your sentence and place the publication date in
parentheses. The first time you cite the name of the author(s), provide both
first and last names:
Vincent P. Crawford and Hans Haller (1990).
Thereafter, refer to the author(s) by last name only:

Crawford (1998)
Thus, a first-time reference:
Sender-receiver games, introduced by Jerry Green and Nancy Stokey (1980)
and Vincent P. Crawford and Joel Sobel (1982), provide the simplest
stylized environment in which communication is essential.
A reference to authors previously mentioned:
These theories come in two guises: explicit dynamic theories, i.e., Canning
(1992) and Nöldeke and Samuelson (1992), and static solution concepts,
i.e., Blume et al. (1993) and Wärneryd (1993).
• Use “et al.” (et alias = and others) when authors number three or more.
• Place punctuation, if any is called for, after the parenthetical date.
Soft Reference
To evoke a source that substantiates a claim you make, cite the name of the
author(s), as well as the date, in parentheses. As above, the first time you cite
the author(s), provide both first and last names:
(Vincent P. Crawford and Hans Haller, 1990; Matthew Rabin and Joel Sobel,
1996)
Thereafter, refer to the author(s) by last name only:
(Crawford and Sobel, 1982; Crawford, 1998)
• Authors are listed in order of publication date.
• Separate sources with a semi-colon.
Thus, in an article that has already cited Andreas Blume:
Such “babbling equilibria” are proper (Roger B. Myerson, 1978; Blume,
1994), and even strategic stability (Elon Kohlberg and Jean-Francois
Mertens, 1986) does not rule out uninformative equilibria in general.
LISTING YOUR REFERENCES
When readers want to know more about a source – what its title is, where it
was published, when it appeared – they will look at your list of REFERENCES at
the end of your paper. The bibliographical information there makes it possible
for readers themselves to track down the source.
Note that the word REFERENCES is capitalized – because AER Style de-
mands that it be so. Indentation, capitalization, punctuation, and the ordering
of information in REFERENCES define a particular documentation style and
should be scrupulously followed. Even boldface, italics, and spacing count.

Three Types of Sources
The information contained in a REFERENCES entry and the way in which this
information is formatted depend largely on the type of source it is. Is the
source an article in a journal? a reference work? a book by a single author? an
essay in a collection? a working paper? an unpublished doctoral dissertation?
In order to format the entry correctly, you need to know.
There are three main types of sources: journal articles, books, and
unpublished sources.
• Journal articles appear in publications that are issued at regular intervals,
or periods; hence “periodical,” the synonym for “journal.” A telltale sign of
the journal is the publication date: month (or season) and year. Another
sign is the absence of a publisher’s name (such as “Cambridge University
Press”).
• The opening pages of a book will give such information as author (if there
is one), title, name of the publisher, and place and year of publication. A
book that is a collection of essays (also known as an “anthology”) will give
the name(s) of its editor(s) and will feature a Table of Contents listing the
essays in the collection. Such a collection should not be confused with a
periodical.
• Unpublished sources, which are available from the individuals who wrote
them or the institution that sponsored them, are of various kinds: the
mimeograph (a photocopied paper or report), the unpublished doctoral
dissertation, the working paper, and so on. Other unpublished sources
include course lectures, websites, and e-mail messages.
See below for sample entries according to these three types of sources.
Basic Guidelines
Whether a source is a journal article, a book, or an unpublished source, you
should follow these basic guidelines when formatting it for your REFERENCES.
• Alphabetical listing. Sources are listed in alphabetical order, according to
the last name of the author (or the last name of the primary author, if
there’s more than one). If the source has no author – for example, U.S.
Bureau of the Census – it should be listed alphabetically according to its
initial letter.
• Formatting author(s)’ names. Authors’ last names are always listed before
their first names. The punctuation separating individual authors’ names
changes depending on the number of authors.
One author:
Davis, Donald R.
Two authors:
Kohlberg, Elon and Mertens, Jean-Francois.
Three authors:
Kandori, Michihiro; Mailath, George J. and Rob, Rafael.

Four authors:
Berg, Joyce E.; Daley, Lane; Dickhaut, John and O’Brien, John.
Note the semicolon (;) used to divide some, but not all, of the names in the
three- and four-author examples.
• Repeat authors. Sometimes your REFERENCES will contain more than one
source by the same author or authors. In this case, do not spell out the
author’s or authors’ name(s) after the first entry; instead, use an
underscore (___) to signify the name(s). List sources by the same author(s)
in order of publication date.
Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J. “Integration and the
Competitiveness of Peripheral Industry,” in Christopher Bliss and Jorge
Braga de Macedo, eds., Unity with diversity in the European economy,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 56–77.
___. “Globalization and the Inequality of Nations.” Quarterly Journal of
Economics, November 1995, 110 (4), pp. 857–80.
Note that the second source above was written by exactly the same
authors as the first source. If the second source had been written by
Krugman and, say, Young, their names would have to have been spelled
out.
If the second source had been a book written during the same year (1990)
as the first source, the first source would be listed as 1990a, the second as
1990b.
• Inclusive page numbers. Page numbers are inclusive – that is, they refer to
the pages on which the entire source may be found, not just the page or
two from which you drew a fact or theory. If the first and last page
numbers share an initial numeral, drop the initial numeral of the last page
number: for example, pp. 367–98 (and not pp. 367–398).
SAMPLE REFERENCES ENTRIES
When formatting your REFERENCES section, use the following sample entries
as models. If you don’t find the type of source you’re looking for, pick up a copy
of the American Economic Reviewin the Lamont Reference Room and try to
find a model there, or emulate the closest approximation you can find.
Article Published in a Journal
An entry for a journal article will contain the following information, formatted
as you see:
Author. “Title of the Article.” Name of the Journal, Month Year, Issue
Numeral (Issue Number), pp. X–Z.

Note the boldfaced author name and the italicized journal name and issue
numeral. The “pp.” stands for “page numbers.” The second line is indented, as
are all lines after the first one.
• No author:
Economist. “The Economist Survey of China.” November 28, 1992, 325
(7787), pp. 1–22.
• One author:
Davis, Donald R. “Intra-Industry Trade: A Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo
Approach.” Journal of International Economics, November 1995, 39 (3–
4), pp. 201–26.
• Two authors:
Kohlberg, Elon and Mertens, Jean-Francois. “On the Strategic Stability of
Equilibrium.” Econometrica, September 1986, 54 (5), pp. 1003–37.
• Three authors:
Kandori, Michihiro; Mailath, George J. and Rob, Rafael. “Learning,
Mutation, and Long-Run Equilibria in Games.” Econometrica, January
1993, 61 (1), pp. 29–56.
• Four authors:
Berg, Joyce E.; Daley, Lane; Dickhaut, John and O’Brien, John. “Controlling
Preferences for Lotteries on Units of Experimental Exchange.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics,May 1986, 101 (2), pp. 281–306.
Books
In its most basic form, a book will contain the following information,
formatted as you see:
Author. The title of the book. City of Publication: Name of the Press, Year of
Publication.
Note the boldfaced author name and the italicized title. Only the initial letter
of the title is capitalized. The second line is indented, as are all lines after the
first one.
• Reference works:
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce. U.S. census of
manufactures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1992.

National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resource Studies.
Research and development in industry. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1992.
Even the period after Studies is in boldface.
• By a single author:
Rosenberg, Nathan. Perspectives on technology. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1976.
Helpman, Elhanan and Krugman, Paul R. Market structure and foreign
trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
MA, the abbreviation for “Massachusetts,” is used with “Cambridge” to
avoid confusion with the first Cambridge – Cambridge, England.
• An essay in an edited collection:
Whinnom, Keith. “Linguistic Hybridization and the Special Case’ of Pidgins
and Creoles,” in Dell Hymes, ed., Pidginization and creolization of
languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 91–116.
Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J. “Integration and the
Competitiveness of Peripheral Industry,” in Christopher Bliss and Jorge
Braga de Macedo, eds., Unity with diversity in the European economy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 56–77.
Maskus, Keith. “Comparing International Trade Data and Product and
National Characteristics Data for the Analysis of Trade Models,” in
Peter Hooper and J. David Richardson, eds., International economic
transactions: Issues in measurement and empirical research. NBER
Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 55. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991, pp. 17–56.
The name of the essay is in quotation marks. Note the capitalization
scheme. An editor is “ed.,” editors are “eds.” Inclusive page numbers help
the reader easily locate the essay.
Unpublished Sources
• Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation:
Clausing, Kimberly A. “Essays in International Economic Integration.” Ph.D.
dissertation, Harvard University, 1996.
• Working paper or discussion paper:
Kramarz, Francis. “When Repeated Cheap Talk Generates a Common
Language.” Working paper, Institut National de la Statistique et des
Etudes Economiques (INSEE), 1992.

Sopher, Barry and Zapater, Iñigo.“Communication and Coordination in
Signalling Games: An Experimental Study.” Working paper, Rutgers
University, 1994.
Wei, Shang-Jin. “How Reluctant Are Nations in Global Integration?”
National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA) Working
Paper No. 5531, April 1996.
Green, Jerry and Stokey, Nancy. “A Two-Person Game of Information
Transmission.” Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion
Paper No. 751, Harvard University, 1980.
• Mimeograph (i.e., photocopied material)
Fujita, Masahisa; Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J. “Agricultural
Transport Costs.” Mimeo, MIT, December 14, 1996.
• Class lecture or speech:
Foote, Christopher L. “Introduction to Economic Theory.” Lecture in
Economics 970, Harvard University, 12 February 1999.
• Website:
U.S. Census Bureau. <http://www.census.gov/> cited 21 February 1999.
• E-mail message:
Neugeboren, Robert.neugebor@fas.harvard.edu “Economic Models.”
Personal e-mail, 16 January 1999.

Appendix A | Fields in Economics
The economic approach is applicable to a wide range of social interactions,
which can make finding a topic for your paper particularly difficult. Perhaps
your instructor has provided alist of potential topics. Which should you
choose? Perhaps the assignment leaves the choice of a topic entirely up to
you. How should you get started? Below you will find a list of fields in
economics that should help narrow the scope of your choices.
DEVELOPMENT
Annual per capita income in the United States today is $24,000, while half the
world’s population subsists on less than $1,500 a year. Economists and others
have long tried to understand the factors contributing to this enormous gap
between rich and poor nations and have long sought effective ways to
accelerate growth in developing economies. Over the past thirty years,
development economics as a field has dealt with the specific economic
problems of relatively poor countries. Understanding development means
understanding the political and social conditions that impel and constrain it.
For instance, fear of Western imperialism led the rulers of Meji Japan to
overthrow the Tokugama Shogunate and embark on an ambitious economic
program that turned medieval Japan into a nineteenth-century industrial
power in two generations. In Africa, perhaps most acutely, it is difficult to
understand cycles of growth without an appreciation of political patterns and
customs. Today, most development economists apply the standard analytical
tools of economics to the specific problems confronting developing countries,
modifying those tools where necessary.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Few areas of economics have grown so rapidly in recent years as environ-
mental economics. As people have more fully realized that important natural
resources are in finite supply, attempts to conserve and to recycle have
steadily gained momentum. Since very few questions of environmental policy
can be cast purely in terms of black and white, economists, with their long
tradition of analyzing trade-offs, have played important roles in designing
environmental regulations. Questions asked include: Does it make most sense
to reduce pollution by setting emission standards or through using tax policy

to create incentives for emissions reductions? How can we decide which
species have the greatest priority for protection? What does "sustainability"
consist of?
ECONOMIC HISTORY
It is hard to gain a coherent picture of what the economy is without
understanding how it evolved and what history teaches us about how
different economies function. It is important to learn about qualitative and
quantitative consequences of the industrial revolution for levels of wealth, the
sectoral distribution of production, the distribution of income, the state of
technology, the role of government, and the development of commerce. It is
important to learn which of current economic institutions and behavioral
relationships have persisted over long stretches of time and which are
relatively new. It is also important to be exposed to the wide range of past
economic problems, so they can know how standard micro and macro
techniques apply, and where they fail. Things change, but it can look as if the
institutions and practices of today have existed forever. A historical
perspective can help bring the issues of today into better focus, just as it can
help explain events in the past and offer a trajectory toward the future.
FINANCE
Robert Merton and Myron Scholes won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics for
their options pricing model, a relatively simple equation that spawned the
field of financial economics. Financial economics studies the behavior and
structure of financial markets and institutions, including commercial banks,
insurance companies, investment banks, mutual funds – players in the stock
and bond markets. Some research focuses on corporate finance and the
capital structure of firms, the kinds of analyses that go on inside a corporate
finance department of a Wall Street investment bank. Others look at portfolio
management and the analysis of risk, arbitrage, and time discounting applied
to the valuation of various financial assets. Financial economics has taken on
an increasingly international perspective, comparing the financial systems of
the US, Germany, and Japan, for instance, or analyzing the links between the
development of local capital markets and the real economy.
GAME THEORY
In the last twenty-five or so years, theorists have made great advances in
characterizing the behavior of households, workers, and firms. Among the
most active areas of current research are considerations of the roles of
imperfect information, uncertainty, and strategic behavior in shaping the way
that many economic interactions take place. Game theory is often used for
such analyses. These lines of research have been helpful in explaining
situations in which for example, involuntary unemployment is persistent or
people cannot get loans despite being willing to pay the going interest rate.

INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
Industrial organization seeks to apply economic theories of markets to actual
industries and firms in the United States and other developed industrial
economies. The inquiry starts by comparing the motives and organizations of
actual enterprises to those that economic models assume the firm possesses.
The industrial organization field is built around a structure-conduct-
performance framework. The constraints imposed on firms by their
environments and their competitors lead them to certain strategic choices
and activities, which have impacts on the performance of markets as social
allocation devices. Research in industrial organization proceeds along two
lines: statistical investigations (to make sure that the cases cited are
representative) and case studies (to make sure that statistical investigations
are really asking the right questions and producing meaningful answers). It is
less business-oriented than policy- and theory-oriented – although the
analyses of industrial organization hold considerable relevance for those
planning business careers.
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
Both historically and today the field of international economics has been and
is policy-oriented: What should governments do? How should they regulate
the cross-border economic relationships that their citizens enter into? As
world trade and finance becomes more salient, international economics
threatens to become coterminous with the study of economic policy in
general. Today, even in such a large economy as the United States, it is very
difficult to examine issues in public finance, macroeconomics, industrial
organization, or labor economics without paying very close attention to the
international context.
LABOR ECONOMICS
Labor economics applies basic tools of microeconomics to the analysis of labor
markets and the determination of the wage rate. What are the arguments for
and against a minimum wage? What factors explain wage differentials? It
distinguishes itself by two features. First, it is an intensely empirical sub-field,
in which students are expected to analyze data – often from very large
computerized data sets – as part of their study. Second, it is one of the few
subfields where actual empirical fieldwork – visits to companies and unions –
is encouraged. Labor economics requires a good knowledge of price theory
and a sound grasp of statistics.
MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY
The two principal ways that public policy affects the course of the economy in
the United States are the government's monetary policy – implemented in
financial markets by the country's central bank, the Federal Reserve – and
fiscal policy, implemented through the taxing and spending decisions that
Congress and the President make (or fail to make). Politicians assume, and
economists believe, that such monetary and fiscal policies can exert very

strong influences on such determinants of economic welfare as the rate of
inflation, the rate of the economy's growth, the level of employment, and
ultimately the standard of living.
PUBLIC FINANCE
Topics stressed in this field include efficiency and equity arguments for
government "interference" in market economies, what it means for the
government to provide a level playing field on which private economic activity
can take place, theories advanced to explain actual choices by representative
governments, the effects of government tax and expenditure decisions on the
allocation of resources, and the distribution of well-being. Special attention is
given to the fiscal institutions of the United States.
URBAN ECONOMICS
The phrase "urban crisis" is again found on the pages of major newspapers,
often linked to issues of poverty, crime, and the breakdown of the family.
Detroit has lost more than half its population in the past thirty years. Poverty,
crime in inner-city neighborhoods, infrastructure, racial discrimination,
friction between immigrant and other ethnic groups; and the gap between
the desires for public services and the willingness to pay for them play an even
more important role in the American drama today than they did in the late
1960's when studying urban problems was at a fore. Many urban problems
have their roots in market processes. Space or location plays a central role in
urban markets both in creating value and in generating positive and negative
externalities. Ease of transportation is a good, but nearness to high-crime
areas is a bad. Open space is a good, but long commutes are a bad. And so
forth. You get what you pay for. But you rarely pay for what you(r actions lead
other people to) get.

Appendix B | Standard Statistical Sources
SECONDARY SOURCES
The Economic Report of the President
Published annually, The Economic Report of the President includes:
(1) current and foreseeable trends in and annual goals for employment,
production, real income, and Federal budget outlays; (2) employment
objectives for significant groups of the labor force; and (3) a program for
carrying out these objectives. Reports from 1996–1999 are available on the
web at w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/.
Statistical Abstract of the United States
Published annually, the Statistical Abstract is a collection of statistics on social
and economic conditions in the United States. Selected international data are
also included. It is your best source of information on relevant primary data
sources available from the Census Bureau, other Federal agencies, and private
organizations. The 1998 Statistical Abstract is available on the web at
www.census.gov/statab/www/.
World Tables
Published annually by the World Bank, the World Tables provide standardized
data on GDP, population, government deficits, trade, social indicators, etc. for
numerous individual countries (161 in the 1994 edition) and are thus a key
reference for international comparisons. A Supplement containing revised
data is published approximately six months after the main volume. Data are
presented as annual times series covering multiple years (1972–1992, 1994
edition), as well as by topics and country.
PRIMARY SOURCES
Census
Conducted every ten years, the census serves as a vital statistical database. It
collects information on an individual’s place of birth, ethnicity, native
language, family history, annual income, etc., and thus gives a picture of who
is living in the United States.

Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES)
Conducted since 1889, the CES obtains data on frequently purchased items,
such as food or housekeeping supplies, as well as on major items of expense,
such as property or vehicle purchases. This is a key source of consumption
data.
Current Population Survey (CPS)
A monthly survey of about 50,000 households, the CPS has been conducted
since 1968. It is the primary source of information on the characteristics of the
US labor force. In addition to providing estimates of employment,
unemployment, earnings, and hours of work byoccupation, industry, and class
of worker, it also sheds light on a variety of demographic characteristics
including age, sex, race, marital status, and educational attainment of the
labor force. Supplemental questions provide information on a variety of topics,
including school enrollment, income, previous work experience, health,
employee benefits, and work schedules.
National Longitudinal Survey (NLS)
The NLS currently provides 6 panels of information about the labor market
experiences and other aspectsof the interviewees. The surveys also include
data about a wide range of events such as schooling and career transitions,
marriage and fertility, training investments, child-care usage, and drug and
alcohol use. The breadth of these surveys allows for analysis of a variety of
topics such as the transition from school to work, job mobility, youth
unemployment, educational attainment, and the returns to education,
welfare recipiency, the impact of training, and retirement decisions.
THE INTERNET
The internet is increasingly a source for economic data. There are a number of
sites that provide a wealth of information. These include the following:
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics, stats.bls.gov, reports on a diverse set of
indicators including unemployment, the consumer price index as well as
lesser known data on work stoppage, collective bargaining, occupational
injury, and illness rates, etc.
• Bureau of Economic Analysis, www.bea.doc.gov, an agency of the
Department of Commerce, provides data on GDP, industrial output and
investment as well as international trade.
• Fedstats, www.fedstats.gov, makes public data from over 70 different
federal agencies. Data cover such diverse issues as natural resources and
the environment, motor vehicle accidents, and wages and weekly
earnings.
• FRED, or the Federal Reserve Economic Database, www.stls.frb.org/fred/,
provides historical US economic and financial data, including daily U.S.
interest rates, monetary and business indicators, exchange rates, balance

of payments, and regional economic data for Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana,
Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR),
www.icpsr.umich.edu. ICPSR culls a wide variety of data on topics as
diverse as education, aging, mental health, criminal justice, etc. It is an
invaluable source of on-line data.
• National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/data_index.html,
provides a wide variety of both current and historical macro, industry-
level, and individual data. Their listings include the CPS and extracts from
the CES.
• The Harvard MIT Data Center, www.hmdc.harvard.edu/jsp/index.jsp, the
universities' official representative to ICPSR, the Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research, and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS),
provides access to Murray Center and Social Sciences Program Data and is
a central contact point for many other archives and data suppliers.
• The Harvard Economics Department’s website
www.economics.harvard.edu/info/links.html, provides links to some of the
most widely used data available on the web. See the section entitled “Data
Sources and Information.”
• Bill Goffe’s Resources for Economists on the Internet, rfe.org/, categorizes
data by research topics, making it extremely useful for finding data that is
relevant to a new research project.

Appendix C | Electronic Indices to Periodical Literature
EconLit
The primary index to economic periodical articles, EconLit is an indexed
bibliography with selected abstracts of the economics literature produced by
the American Economic Association. It covers over 600 major journals as well
as articles in collected volumes, books, book reviews, dissertations, and
working papers licensed from the Cambridge University Press’ Abstracts of
Working Papers in Economics. It is available through the Harvard College
Library at: hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/economics/econlit/; a valid
Harvard ID is required.
NBER Working Papers Database
The NBER’s website indexes the working papers of affiliated faculty. This is an
excellent source for empirical work in progress. Full copies of working papers
are available free to subscribers and for a small fee to others from the website
or through the mail. They are also available in many academic libraries.
Searches are possible at papers.nber.org.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
The SSRN Electronic Library has an Abstract Database containing abstracts on
over 25,700 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an
Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 11,600 downloadable full
text documents. It includes working papers from the NBER as well as
economics departments around the country. Searches can be made at
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/search.taf.
Lexis-Nexis Statistical (formerly Statistical Universe)
A bibliographic database which indexes and abstracts the statistical content
of selected United States government publications, state government as well
as business and association publications. The abstracts include a detailed
description of a publication’s statistical contents and primary bibliographic
information. This database is available through the Harvard College Library at:
hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/economics/; a valid Harvard ID is required.
JSTOR (Journal Storage)
Many of the articles you will need are available on-line through JSTOR. JSTOR
holds many of the top economics journals as well as numerous others in

political science, demography, history and statistics. This resource is available
through the Harvard College Library at: www.jstor.org.ezp2.harvard.edu/; a
valid Harvard ID is required.
RePEC (Research Papers in Economics)
This website calls itself a “decentralized database of working papers, journal
articles and software components.” Searches can be made at www.repec.org.
Individual Economics Departments Websites
Many economics departments make faculty working papers available on their
websites. They can be particularly good sources for theoretical work in
progress or for empirical work done by researchers not affiliated with the
NBER. For links to economics departments around the world, see
ideas.uqam.ca/EDIRC/index.html.

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